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I don't know if this is common UI-testing knowlege, but in Will Wright's talk, "Lessons from Game Design" he says that they always do UI/game testing with two people, instead of just one. They have both of them "think outloud" about how they're using the UI and how they're figuring out what to do (successfull or unsuccessful).

He said that when you have two people in front of a computer you learn more because they're much more likely to talk to each other about using the UI, esp. if the two people know each other, e.g., they're room-mates of just "mates." If I understand this right, it's because they start having dialogs like:

"We need to feed this guy, so I'll click on the menu on the right."

"IIIIiidiot! Click on the menu on the left...Gaaaawwww!"

"OK, let's have him eat that steak."

"All he does is eat all grandma's steak! GOSH!"

And, thus, you learn that it' not clear that steak eating can be had from the left menu.